Through the grapevine...

A common site at this time of year is to see a lone ‘vigneron’ bent over the vines with secateurs in hand, painstakingly pruning row after row of plants.  What is a much less common site is to see 40 people attempting to do the same thing at the same time.  This was what passers-by would have seen last Saturday morning as we were attending a course in pruning. Not my normal Tasse du Thé but when you live in one of the largest wine-producing regions of France you can’t help but take an interest – and there was also the promise of a ‘Grillade’ accompanied by local wines as an incentive! 

The morning started off with coffee and a slide-show in the Terrassous ‘Cave’ (our local wine co-operative), then we all walked into the neighbouring vineyards to try it for ourselves.  Some of us were better than others, but at the end of the session there were twigs everywhere and at least 10 rows had been pruned (although I don’t think we were there as cheap labour!)

Towards midday the smell of the barbecue proved irresistible and we all sat down to enjoy a really good meal including salads, crusty bread, typical Catalan style grilled meats (too fatty for me) and a wonderful cheese plate.  Wine pruning is very thirsty work so luckily they had also provided the entire range of local wines – Sweet Muscat as an apero, then Rosé and/or Red to follow. 

  

 

Somehow we all made our way back to the Cave where pudding had been laid out – accompanied by yet more sweet Muscat (rude to say no, of course!) – and we were all presented with a certificate.  I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job anytime soon, but it has certainly opened my eyes to the back-breaking work that goes into producing my wine!